Pearls and Irritations

Like many APS officers I had dealings with ASIO on occasion. Following Mike Burgess’s playbook I cannot name specifics in the interest of National Security, but almost without exception I found ASIO activities to be conducted by a mob of arse-clowns; the old TV cartoon comedy of Spy-vs-Spy rang terrifyingly true.

Many excellent recent articles in P&I authored by those with impeccable credentials have examined the theatre of the absurd that is ‘National Security’ commentary, including:

Penny Wong rattles the China can – Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com)  – P J Keating;

ASIO needs a boss who can stand above the tumult – Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com)  Jack Waterford

Mike Burgess has damaged ASIO’s reputation and must resign – Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com)  Paddy Gourley

Bewilderingly unsophisticated: ASPI deputy director fires up China threat megaphone – Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com) Jon Stanford

There are stories dating back to at least the time of Lionel Murphy’s ‘raid’ on ASIO. Had our P.M., Foreign Minister and Minister of Defence read a compilation over the Christmas break they might refrain from silly comments, of which Penny Wong’s is the latest and most surprising. She is smarter than this.

Like many APS officers I had dealings with ASIO on occasion. Following Mike Burgess’s playbook I cannot name specifics in the interest of National Security, but almost without exception I found ASIO activities to be conducted by a mob of arse-clowns; the old TV cartoon comedy of Spy-vs-Spy rang terrifyingly true.

My first contact was in 1968 as a student at Macquarie University, then newly minted. Not yet a hotbed of radical activity and barely part of the clandestine web of academic institutions which nurtured such subversive activity as protesting against the war in Vietnam (which I embraced).

There was a lecturer/tutor there who not only could spell Russia but had actually BEEN there, so ASIO dispatched three operatives to monitor we desperates.  They blended in about as well as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to sneak into a polar-bears-only golf club (source: ‘Blackadder’).  If they were a comedy act diverting attention from serious investigatory work they were marvellous actors; ASIO reports of work of the time released many years later suggests this was not the case.

They worked with the utmost seriousness; we feigned plots and actions of ludicrous nature which they tried to document without being noticed, quite unsuccessfully.   They were very quickly branded the Three Stooges.

Forward to the mid-70’s: ASIO housed in (a building adjacent to the south end of Anzac Parade, name redacted).  The elevators did not have a destination button for the ASIO floor, so they all travelled to the floor above and then walked back down the stairs each morning – clever, clever deception, almost nobody worked it out.

Very hush-hush; my wife worked for A-G’s (within which portfolio ASIO existed) in general administration and routinely had to contact ASIO on simple matters.  She rapidly became tired of the time wasted in phone calls to officers at ASIO to be met with a bland: ‘We cannot confirm that anybody of that name may or may not work here’.

She found that saying: ‘Well, does he/she want to get paid, or not?’ would inevitably result in a hasty ‘Hang on, I’ll put you through’.   It never, ever occurred to anybody in ASIO that there was more value in hiding in plain sight than going through a pointless routine that would not have fooled a Pantomime audience of any age.

Forward to the early ‘80’s: having left the APS and then returned initially as a consultant to what was then Australian Archives, I actually did need a Top Secret clearance – there is much serious government data held in the National Archives that genuinely could impact national security.

An ASIO officer was sent to interview me; we chatted for more than 30 minutes about the health issues that had beset this officer from birth, and finally, when I suggested that I had work to do, I was asked: ‘Are you, or have you ever been, a member of a political party?’  ‘No’. ‘Are you a Communist?’ ‘No’.

That was it.  Possibly my mild tolerance to listening to health issues is a highly sophisticated way of repressing treacherous tendencies, I will never know.  I cannot eradicate the feeling of similarity of that episode with the description of the CID officers’ activities in Joseph Heller’s Catch -22

What I do know, is that ASD, at that time a technical watchdog and advisor was of great assistance in ensuring the electronic security of the facility and auditing the software development for potential vulnerabilities.  What ex-ASD Burgess is even doing in ASIO is suspect; his annual performance pieces are a travesty of good administration.  You would hear more convincing pitches at a circus side-show alley.

What Andrew Shearer is doing at ONI at all is a greater mystery – his political inclinations are on crude display in various pieces, including for the IPA.  A person with such overt bias should never be placed within shouting distance of authority in any national security organisation, let alone be given any credence.

Penny Wong, did you forget the interference by the CIA in Australian politics before and during Gough’s time? Have you overlooked, for instance, that the feckless Billy McMahon acquiesced to USA calls for intelligence support to overthrow Allende? Do you think for a moment that the ‘all the way with the USA’ tilt to National Security governance today is any more tuned to Australian interests than has formerly been the case?

I have a few more stories, but for another day perhaps.  None of them supports the idea that our ‘national security’ organisations are doing good work in Australia’s interests, though other masters may welcome their influence on our government.

That influence should not be occurring.

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